Chapter Text
I'm carefully painting delicate leaves made of xenonite with a copper-green pigment paint and a paintbrush made of my own hair. Back on Earth, I was never really much of an artist. I'm still not. This isn't for my own creative enrichment as much as it is exercise for my fine motor skills, which have been pretty abysmal with the constant tremors and arthritis pain in my fingers and wrists. It gives me something to do when I'm not teaching, also. The Earth Museum is going to be really cool when it's done, with real-size xenonite statues of Earth animals and human buildings. Eridian artists have been using their camera-to-3D-representation tech to figure out what they're building from pictures on my laptop.
I know none of the Eridians will know or care whether the leaves on the big white oak tree they're building are actually green. But I care. A monochrome grey-metal tree is a little bit depressing. I know I'm never going to see a real tree again, so I might as well make this one as realistic as possible. The Eridians sourced me plenty of copper to make the paint. I've individually painted about 4,000 of them, and the Eridians have done way more (like, two orders of magnitude more).
There's a very loud and frantic knocking at the wall of my smaller meeting room. I'm startled enough that I drop my paintbrush. I'm not expecting a visitor this afternoon.
“Coming!” I wipe a little bit of paint off of my fingertips and grab the edge of the table to help myself stand up to transfer into my wheelchair. I don’t need it every day. The cane is still enough most days, but the Eridians made me a wheelchair about an Earth-year ago when I had the first day where the cane hadn't been enough. That had been scary. I use the wheelchair a little more often than I technically need to now, to get used to it and also because I've found that using it on moderately bad days makes the really bad days less common.
More knocking.
“I said I'm coming, sheesh, be patient.” I hit the button to open my side door into the meeting room.
“Grace! Grace Grace Grace Grace–”
It's Rocky, and he's all riled up about something. Wait, wasn't he supposed to be doing some big important thrum on the other side of the continent? “Hey, Rock, what are you doing back so early? I thought you–”
“Grace, there's something coming! There's something coming!” His voice is so high-pitched it almost hurts my ears. He's thrilled about something. It's close to the highest octave I've ever heard from him, and I can barely understand his words. “There's something coming towards Erid from deep space!”
I stare at him while he scampers around his side of the meeting room. “Uh. Elaborate?” I say after a few seconds. “You seem happy, so I assume it's not an asteroid bringing death and destruction.”
“No no no, no asteroid! It's small and metallic and decelerating at 15 m/s/s,” Rocky squeaks. “Grace, it's coming from the direction of Sol.”
A shiver runs down my spine. My body knows what Rocky is saying before my mind catches up, and I'm glad that I used the wheelchair to get over here because if I was standing, my legs would have given out. “What?” I whisper.
“Grace, it's coming from Earth! It must be coming from Earth!”
It's been over 20 years since my beetles reached Earth. That's plenty of time for an Astrophage-fueled probe to have been launched and to reach the 40-Eridani system. It must be a message for the Eridians from the Earthlings. A neighborly greeting. My chest spasms painfully.
“A message?” I say out loud. “Oh, wow. Rocky, wow. How long until it reaches the planet?”
“No no no!” Rocky repeats shrilly. “You don't understand. The object is sixteen times larger than the Hail Mary.”
Rocky's right. I don't understand. Why would a probe be so much larger than my little ship? The Hail Mary was large enough to house three people and their supplies and scientific equipment for a few years. I can't think of anything that an uncrewed vessel could contain that would need so much space. Even in my absolute most jaded, uncharitable thoughts, a bomb to destroy a whole planet wouldn't need that much space anymore with the discovery of Astrophage as a fuel source. And anyway, I'm not so jaded as to think humanity would actually respond to the existence of a non-aggressive alien species with something as dramatic as a Death Star.
Then something clicks.
Rocky said it was decelerating at 15 m/s/s. That was the same acceleration that the Hail Mary was built for. The beetles could accelerate much more rapidly than that just fine. The only reason why the Hail Mary traveled at that acceleration was…
To protect the fragile little human bodies inside.
“Holy moly,” I announce.
The thing coming from Earth isn't a greeting card. It's a ship with a crew.
I'm not going to be the only human in the 40-Eridani system for much longer.
An updated foreword of To Us, He Was Just Mr. Grace: A Biography of Dr. Ryland Grace by Yiming Hart. 2052 edition.
Ten months ago, on March 29th, 2051, Earthlings received what has now frequently been referred to, in a loving and tongue-in-cheek manner, as “our saving grace”: three deep space probes containing an alien life form from the planet Tau Ceti-E, a natural predator of Astrophage carefully and meticulously bred to survive in the atmosphere of Venus. This predator, Taumoeba, has already helped us return our sun nearly to its full luminosity. Ice is melting all over the globe. The contents of seed vaults are being returned to warm soil. Humanity faces the future of a thriving home planet once again.
There are not many cases in history where we can point at a single human and say, this is the one. This is the one who changed everything. This is the one who saved us. Scientific advancements are always the products of countless human minds and lifetimes all striving for a better and safer existence for the next generation. The narrative of individualistic accomplishments is at best naive and oversimplified and at worst serves to deliberately erase the hard work and brilliance of marginalized people.
In almost every way, Dr. Ryland Grace did not save humanity alone.
Thousands of people from dozens of countries worked directly to give Project Hail Mary the best possible chance of success, and hundreds of thousands more did so indirectly by building the foundation of scientific knowledge that the project could stand on firmly. The success of Project Hail Mary is a crowning achievement of humanity's ability to put our differences aside and work together collectively for the common good. I'm certain that Dr. Grace would agree.
And yet, in one very specific way, Dr. Grace did save humanity alone. We know now that his brave crewmates, Engineer Olyesa Ilyukhena and Commander Yáo Li-Jie, did not survive the journey to Tau Ceti. With all of humanity united behind him but out of his reach forever, Dr. Grace's burden was as daunting as that of Atlas. He stared down the prospect of holding the weight of the world on his shoulders.
But astonishingly, he did not have to hold it alone for long.
Every human on Earth with the ability to see has by now watched the de-classified videos that Dr. Grace sent back to Earth along with the Taumoeba. Every human with the ability to hear has listened to the melodious notes of the first intelligent voice that ever reached us from beyond our own planet. “Rocky” the Eridian has become as beloved of a savior of Earth as Dr. Grace, though we have only known about him and his species for less than a year.
The fact that Dr. Grace encountered another intelligent being at Tau Ceti was extraordinarily singular. The fact that, once they met, he befriended that intelligent being and cooperated with him to save both of their species…well, that is unsurprising to anyone who ever had the honor of learning from Dr. Grace. His patience, communication skills, humor, and kindness were exactly the traits I would have chosen for the first human to hold a conversation with an alien to possess.
How lucky we were, to have sent a middle school teacher to the stars.
Yiming Hart’s phone rang. He tapped his earbud to answer it. “Yeah.”
“I read it,” said Dr. Imara Stone.
“And?”
“You don’t even mention him choosing to sacrifice himself for the aliens in the end.”
“It’s not a eulogy,” Yiming replied. “There’s a whole extra 18,000 words I’ve added in a new final section that does talk about that. And also, everyone knows. It’s more powerful there if it goes unsaid.”
“I knew that,” Imara said. “I was just making sure you knew that.”
Yiming smiled and leaned his head back against the pillow behind him. “So you liked it?”
“Yiming, I have been weeping over it for the past hour waiting to get close enough to call you.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to write your own preface to this version?”
“What the fuck would I write? ‘Mr. Grace made me want to be an astronaut when I was 12 and now I build rockets and do routine orbiter missions for a rich guy who just wants to be in the history books and I kinda hate myself for it but at least I can say I’ve been to space’?” retorted Imara.
“You've always had such a way with words,” Yiming teased.
“It’s not the kind of story people care about. Not past the interviews you’ve already got with me, at least.”
“I get what you mean. I still wish you would. I feel like it shouldn't just be me, you know, but the only other person I'd have trusted to write something for the book was Rebecca, and…”
Imara was silent.
“Anyway,” Yiming said, “the publisher says that preorders are already off the charts. The paper copies are completely sold out–”
“You're getting paper copies of it made?!”
“Only a very limited 15,000 copy run,” Yiming said, trying to sound nonchalant, as if 15,000 paper copies wasn't a larger print run of any book other than the Bible in the past twenty years. “Trees are coming back, remember?”
“So they say. I haven't seen much green from orbit yet.”
“Trees take time to grow.”
“I am aware.”
“So, other than not seeing much green, how's space?” asked Yiming.
“Am I the most cynical person in existence if I say really fucking boring?”
“You're monitoring the remnants of the Petrova line to make sure the Astrophage doesn't start rebounding. How is that boring?”
“Because it's also being done by the ISS and seven other low Earth orbiters and a dozen probes around Venus and every large infrared telescope on the planet. Can I tell you something I definitely shouldn't?” Imara said.
“Always.”
“We aren't supposed to use the telescopes for personal reasons. But sometimes when we aren't scheduled to be monitoring the Petrova line at that exact moment, I switch the settings up and I just look out at 40-Eridani,” said Imara quietly. “I've been watching it dim.”
Yiming got a sudden lump in his throat. “How…how long before we know?” he whispered.
“Probably at least another fifteen years. It's sixteen light years away, so right now I'm seeing what it looked like sixteen years ago. That was before Mr. Grace had even made it to Tau Ceti.”
“Wow,” Yiming uttered.
“But I just keep looking at 40-Eridani and thinking, even though the telescopes we've got up here can't see the planet, I am looking at alien life. I mean, my field of view contains an entire planet full of life that is completely different than ours. And their sun is dying and I think, I know what that feels like, and it's like across all of that time and space, I'm just like them. We're the same,” Imara said, and her voice was suddenly thick with unshed tears.
“...you could just write that,” Yiming told her. “People would love that.”
“No! Because the next thought I always have is awful. By the time we know if Mr. Grace and Rocky managed to get the Taumoeba to Erid, if 40-Eridani doesn't recover, if it just gets worse, we'll know that a whole planet full of people is starting to die. We'll be able to watch them die. And if Earth survives but Erid doesn't, that'll mean Mr. Grace died for nothing. He could have come home and everything would have been the same except he would still be alive.”
Yiming swallowed. “You're right. That's pretty awful.”
“This is why you don't really want me writing anything for your book,” Imara said. “Anyway, what do all those pre-orders mean practically? How rich are you going to be now?”
“I'm making a pretty good chunk of change,” Yiming said evasively.
“Like how much is a pretty good chunk of change?”
“Uh. We don't know exactly, yet. But it looks like it's going to be well over two hundred million.”
Imara whistled, long and low.
“That's not counting interviews and merch sales.” Yiming winced. “You know, when I first started writing the book when we were seventeen, I had no idea…”
“That you'd be one of the most widely read authors in the world by the time you were of legal drinking age?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Do you regret anything?” Imara asked, very solemnly.
“A couple of my early interview appearances, yeah. God, I was such a stupid kid,” Yiming snorted.
“Now you're a less stupid adult. Congratulations!”
“You say that, but I did agree to re-release the book after it has once again been number one on every applicable best-seller list for six months, effectively erasing my last chance to peacefully retire from public view because my agent knows that she can squeeze more cash out of me,” Yiming said. “So I'm not sure you're right on the less stupid thing.”
“Oh, please. You're one of the richest non-politicians non-CEOs in the country. You think she could stop you if you tried to run away?”
“I think,” Yiming said, only half-joking, “that if I joined you on your trip to Mars in two months, she would somehow find a way to follow me.”
“Maybe you just have to go a little further than Mars,” Imara said with a chuckle.
“Know of any missions like that coming up that could use a biographer with three quarters of a bachelor's degree in journalism?” asked Yiming. “Maybe to Europa. Europa sounds nice.”
“If I hear about any and you're still looking for a way to escape your life of fame and fortune, I'll write you an absolutely glowing letter of rec.”
NASA, FurthestReach, and the United Global Space Treaty hold press conference to announce collaborative mission and reveal new interstellar spacecraft
Since the Hail Mary's probes returned to Earth two years ago containing videos of an intelligent alien being from a planet orbiting the star 40-Eridani, humanity has had one burning question: when are we going to go say hello?
Sixteen light-years away from our own star, 40-Eridani was also dying of an Astrophage infection when Dr. Ryland Grace arrived at Tau Ceti. Despite his Eridian acquaintance gifting him enough fuel to make it back to Earth, Dr. Grace nobly chose to give up this unexpected chance of ever returning home to turn around and search for the stranded alien whose ship had been infested with the very amoeba that was supposed to save both of our stars. We have received no further messages from Dr. Grace. We do not know if he ever found Rocky the Eridian again in the vastness of space, or if they managed to get the Taumoeba to the planet Erid. It will likely be another 12 years or more before the brightening light from a recovering 40-Eridani hopefully reaches Earth. By then, if 40-Eridani has not begun to return to full luminosity, the buffer provided by Erid's thick, blanket-like atmosphere will have run out. Like us before the Hail Mary's success, the Eridians will be facing the extinction of their entire world.
Dr. Ryland Grace knew that he wouldn't be able to live with the decision to potentially let a whole civilization perish in the cold. He gave his life for a chance at saving the Eridians. Today, humanity has announced that we will not let his sacrifice be in vain. We are going to travel to the star 40-Eridani, make contact with the Eridians, and bring them the Taumoeba that can save their star if Dr. Grace's final act failed.
This morning, NASA Administrator Skylar Gonzalez and astronaut Faith Richardson along with Dr. Imara Stone of FurthestReach and seven officials from the United Global Space Treaty announced this new mission in collaboration. NASA's HAIL project (Hailing Alien Intelligent Life) and the UGST's PREX (Peaceful Relations with Extraterrestrials) division are partnering with FurthestReach, who own and have refurbished the proof-of-concept generation ship “последняя надежда” left unfinished by the former Russian government.
This state-of-the-art spacecraft has been renamed Terra's Grace in honor of the man who made first contact. It will take just over 17 years from Earth's perspective for Terra's Grace to reach 40-Eridani, though the astronauts on board will only experience 4 years and 4 months due to relativity. High efficiency Astrophage breeding technology using solar panels will allow the spacecraft to refuel at 40-Eridani over the course of 18 months for the return journey, making this a record-breaking 35 year (just over 10 for the astronauts) space voyage.
The mission commander will be Dr. Imara Stone. After the death of the former CEO of FurthestReach, billionaire Reid Bailey, the company was left to its employees with Dr. Stone now holding controlling interest. Dr. Stone, who has been guiding the company's direction since her return from Mars, was famously one of Dr. Grace's middle school students the year that he left teaching to work on Project Hail Mary.
“I am proud to carry on my favorite teacher's legacy,” she told the press this morning. “I believe Dr. Grace's actions on the Hail Mary should be a lesson for all Earthlings. When we see something new, something alien, something we have no innate way to communicate with, our reaction does not have to be fear or defensiveness. The first human to meet a person not from Earth had no weapons and no militaristic authority. He saw an alien spaceship and his first response was to wonder if they were in the same kind of trouble that he was, and if they could help each other. In reaching out to Rocky the Eridian with friendship and compassion, Dr. Grace established an interstellar precedent: humanity is here to help. This mission aims to confirm to the galaxy and to ourselves that Dr. Grace's kindness was not an outlier for our species, but one of our defining features.”
Second-in-Command on the Terra's Grace, NASA's renowned astronaut Faith Richardson, stepped forward then to give us an overview of the mission's purpose. “Our mission is three-pronged. First, to make peaceful and cooperative contact with the Eridians with the goal of mutually learning from each other and establishing a relationship going forward. Second, to determine whether Dr. Grace was successful in his final mission and, if not, to deliver Taumoeba and assistance to restore 40-Eridani's luminosity. And third, to study the effects of and create a model for long-term interstellar voyages with human astronauts.”
The rest of the press conference was spent answering questions about the logistics of the mission. The full transcript can be accessed in our archive at the link below.
Ship Manifest
Command Team
Commander Dr. Imara Stone
Second-in-Command Faith Richardson
Third-in-Command Dr. Lei Jianhong
Tactics Officer Jayden Simmons
Tactics Officer Varennikova Yulia Nikolayevna
Engineering Team
Primary Ship Engineer Kuvayev Artem “Tyoma” Timofeyevich
Secondary Ship Engineer Dr. Makala Kekai
Life Support Engineer Dr. Wesley “Webs” William Webber
Mechanical Engineer Leslie Donovan
Software Engineer Zora Wolff
Chemical Engineer Dr. Chaya Monash
Xenobiology Team
Speculative Xenobiologist Dr. Darin Lutfi
Molecular Biologist Dr. Razeen el-Amin
Extremophile Expert Dr. Isebet Silva
Chemosynthesis Expert Dr. Sizwe Ndlovu
Marine Trophic Ecologist Dr. T.J. Summers
RNA and Virus Expert Dr. Fatima May
Medical Team
Primary Medical Officer Dr. Safwa al-Halaby
Secondary Medical Officer Dr. Katharine Levine
Physical Therapist Dr. Joseph “Joey” Nadeau
Surgeon Dr. Devon Strande
Pharmacist Dr. Marcus Kadelberg
Counselor Dr. Ivan Ivanovsky
Psychiatrist Dr. Ha-Eun Park
Assorted Sciences
Geologist Dr. Anahita Zamani
Star Astronomer Dr. Lamine Guèye
Exoplanet Astronomer Dr. Liang Qiu
Botanist & Hydroponics Officer Dr. Finley Espinoza
Anthropology Team
Linguist Dr. Azhdahak Parian
Linguist Muhammad Miller
Musicologist Dr. Robin Salali
Cultural Anthropologist Dr. Bineta Diedhiou
Sociologist Elise Sjöholm
Ethologist Kokhta Navana
Atypical Education Specialist Dr. Meghan Thayer
Mission Chronicler Yiming Hart
End of manifest. We are Terra's Grace.